Amazing. Simply amazing. Kudos to Mike Murphy for so beautifully illustrating what we’re dealing with when we try to negotiate with the Republicans. Kudos to Jon Chait for being so prescient. Kudos to Ezra Klein for doing the work to put together the piece.
Go read the piece, but to recap:
Republicans are running around arguing that the president could get a deal if he would just put Chained CPI and Medicare means-testing on the table. The problem is that these Republicans don’t seem to know that the president already put them on the table. So, Ezra suggested that perhaps better communication could help move things along. Chait responded that better communication wouldn’t matter because, if the Republicans had an accurate picture of what the president has proposed, they would just move the goal posts and say that “the cuts aren’t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.”
And then GOP consultant Mike Murphy told Time magazine that Obama could get a deal if he uttered the six magic words, “Some beneficiaries pay more and chained CPI.”
When John Harwood noted on Twitter that Murphy seemed unaware that Obama had already offered both of those items, Murphy responded. At first, Murphy insisted that only means-testing had been offered. When corrected, he followed Chait’s prediction to a ‘T.’
1. (Chait: “the cuts aren’t real”) Murphy: “his CCPI offer is small beans gimmick.”
2. (Chait: “the taxes are awful”) Murphy: the CCPI offer is conditional on “big new revenue.”
3. (Chait: “they can’t trust Obama to carry them out”) Murphy retweets a Twitter comment from someone who was listening in to the conversation: “R’s also don’t trust him, and there’s a history to justify this mistrust.”
As Ezra points out, Mike Murphy is not a fire-breather. He’s very much a moderate Republican circa 1990.
I’d also like to make one other point about this exchange.
In some progressive quarters, people are in love with saying that ObamaCare was the Heritage Foundation’s idea. Is that true?
Well, something very much like ObamaCare was first floated by the Heritage Foundation as an alternative to HillaryCare. But it was about as serious as Murphy’s promise that a deal could be had in exchange for means-testing and Chained CPI. The Republicans never say that they will oppose you no matter what. They usually offer an unacceptable alternative. But if you accept those terms, they just make up new excuses. If Bill Clinton had tried to enact the Republican plan in 1993, they would have moved the goalposts. Their plan was just for show.
Murphy gave the game away because he didn’t know that his demands had already been met.
Meanwhile, Republicans are spinning like crazy to place blame on the President.
From GOP Indiana Sen. Coats last Thursday:
More blah, blah follows.
I think this dovetails nicely with Obama’s overall process of exposing the GOP policies and strategies for what they are. They are having a devil of a time hiding behind their rhetoric now. Their asses keep showing.
And when Obama gets tax loopholes closed, the progressives will point to Romney/Ryan campaign rhetoric and say it was just a GOP plan.
Not really. More like the only way such loopholes get closed is with the “balanced approach” of cutting Social Security, and that’s what we’ll yell about.
5 years into the Obama presidency, Medicare/SS have only been broadened and strengthened, but it makes not difference to the Progressive Seers who, staring balefully at those chicken entrails, know the Doom Awaits.
Who needs acts when you have Dread?
Social Security has not been strengthened; in what way has it been strengthened? It’s arguable that it’s been weakened with the payroll tax cut, but I supported that tax cut (and wanted it extended further) so I won’t argue that.
Most of the Medicare cuts outlined on his website I support…except for the vague “other health savings” (it will depend what they entail).
Either way, Booman has not been in denial about this, unlike you People’s View writers. If a deal is hatched, SS will take a hit. Booman thinks it’s worthwhile given the alternatives. In fact, some over there think so, too (“better for a Dem to hit it than a Republican”).
So one can either trust the predictive skills of people who have been consistently wrong or reason from data.
ACA involved large scale increases to both medicare and medicaid. The payroll tax holidays made SS funding more equitable for a period. The cuts from medicare have actually been cuts to medicare grift for insurance companies.
Of course, SS is under attack from the GOP and they control the House and the media, but the political utility of yelling “we’re fucked” over and over, seems not at all clear.
Chained CPI (to the tune of $130 billion out of seniors’ pockets over ten years) is a direct whack to Social Security.
Yes, it was to come with protections for the “vulnerable,” whatever that means when doing a COLA calculation, but it is still a $13 billion/year cut in benefits.
Jay Carney reiterated that it’s on the table again last week, even before idiots on the Republican side started blaming the president for not offering it.
But as GOP has said multiple times, it comes with conditions that make it unacceptable to them. And if CCPI comes with, for example, the increase of all SS to be over poverty level and lower retirement age for people with hard physical work, I’d think it a great win and a strengthening of SS. But then I’m in favor of social justice and don’t care too much about pet-schemes of progressives.
are you making those conditions up or do you have a source that they are/were under discussion?
They were part of the Deficit commission recommendation. For example.
and
http://www.offthechartsblog.org/the-chained-cpi-a-response-to-robert-kuttner/
Well, the alternatives are miserable.
and the progressives insist that President Obama is the threat to Social Security.
Amazing.
Not the alternative of Nancy Pelosi when asked in 2006:
“Never. Is never good enough for you?”
How about THAT alternative.
If we’re talking about “Doing What We (VSP) Know Must Be Done,” then sure…it’s better.
Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House- facing a hostile WH. Smart people use different tactics in different situations – assuming their goal is to win on policy and not to look tough.
How is cutting SS winning on policy?
Oh come on. Let’s suppose they “cut” SS by CCPI which means possibly future increases are trimmed, and in exchange, boost lowest SS above poverty line, shut down the war in Aghanistan AND make corporate foreign earning taxable. Worth it? No? Oh, so you support corporate tax cheats, don’t give a fuck about the poor, and support wars.
It’s really annoying how you people argue as if whatever pet-cause you picked up last week is the moral touchstone of the universe. All politics is about grubby tradeoffs and the purer-than-thou pose is just a scam.
I’ve already seen people referring to Obama’s proposal to close tax loopholes as “Mitt Romney’s plan.”
Nevermind all those months of denouncing Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate. Nevermind all of the Democratic rhetoric about oil and gas tax breaks, tax breaks for off-shoring jobs, or the hedge-fund loophole. Raising revenues by closing tax loopholes is now a Republican plan, because Mitt Romney said so.
President Obama, on the other hand, keeps offering examples of how to move the goalposts.
It’s not just because of his organizing background, but there are elements of that background in his strategies and tactics: framing the issue in as unobjectionable terms as possible, securing agreement from as many people as possible (allies, opponents and undecideds) on the worthiness of the goal, holding firm to the end goal while being endlessly open as to the means of accomplishing it, persuading most of the undecideds and even some of your opponents—leaving the remaining opponents looking increasingly foolish, mean and/or unsympathetic.